State to sue Longmont over new oil and gas regs

City manager said suit was expected

LONGMONT -- As many expected it would, the state of Colorado has notified the city of Longmont it intends to sue over the city's new oil and gas regulations.

Assistant attorney general Jake Matter sent an email to Longmont city attorney Eugene Mei on Tuesday notifying him that the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has "instructed me to prepare and file a complaint against the city." Mei said it was his understanding the suit will be formally filed early next week, to coincide with the day the new regulations are to take effect.

Matter was writing to request a certified copy of the ordinance that will be filed as part of the state's lawsuit.

Mei said he had notified city manager Harold Dominguez and Longmont city council members Tuesday that a lawsuit was imminent.

"I wasn't surprised," Dominguez said Tuesday night, after an unusually short city council meeting. "I think it was really, 'OK, where do we go from here?'

"We really have to see what they file before we can assess anything."

Dominguez pointed to letters that both Matter and Mike King, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, parent organization of the COGCC, had previously sent the city. Both letters implied litigation if Longmont went forward with its new regulations.

"A patchwork of local regulations pertaining to oil and gas operations will inhibit what the General Assembly has recognized as a necessary activity and will impede the orderly development of Colorado's mineral resources," King wrote in his letter in May.

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That letter came after the city council had approved the new regulations on first reading. After a 45-day waiting period, the new regulations were passed on a 5-2 second-reading vote on July 17. The most controversial part of the new regulations, a complete ban on drilling in residential areas, passed by only 4-3.

The COGCC and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry trade group, had been vocal in their opposition to the new regulations, not only in threatening litigation but insisting, as King did in his letter, that "the COGCC's regulations are some of the strongest, most progressive and transparent in the country."

But proponents of the new regulations argued that the state's rules don't go far enough. They said that as a home-rule city, Longmont has a right to regulate what is essentially an industrial activity occurring within its city limits.

At the heart of the controversy is the procedure known as "fracking," or hydraulic fracturing. That's when a mixture of sand, water and chemicals is pumped deep into wells to cause the bedrock to crack, freeing up the natural gas trapped within.

The oil and gas industry contends the process is safe and is the most efficient way to get to natural gas pockets it could never get to before.

But opponents of the procedure say there hasn't been enough study of the process and what side effects it might produce, and they say the COGCC sides too often with the industry it is supposed to be charged with regulating.

Mei said that the city staff used special outside counsel to assist in drafting the new regulations, and special counsel also would be used to defend them in court.

The Times-Call received a tip that a lawsuit was imminent just before the start of the 7 p.m. council meeting. Dominguez and Mei confirmed the tip after the meeting was over, but by that time council members had already gone home. The Times-Call was unable to contact any council members before deadline Tuesday night.

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